Buenos Ayres and the Provinces of the Rio de La Plata / Their Present State, Trade, and Debt

by Sir Woodbine Parish

At its mouth, he says, even at that time, when the waters were at their lowest, it was about 200 yards across, and about five feet in depth; its course from the S.S.W., running with much velocity through a deeply-cut channel over a bed of large rounded stones: the country, as far as could be seen, was a desolate mass of gravel. Some little way up, they found the burial-place of an Indian cacique, over which two stuffed horses were stuck upon stakes, according to their custom; further on, the shore was strewed with trunks of many large trees brought down by the floods; they were of various sorts, but principally pine and cedar, probably the same as is shipped in large quantities from the opposite side of the Cordillera, and from Chiloe, for other parts of Chile and Peru. From the Indians they subsequently learned that dense forests of these trees were to be met with higher up the river. How valuable they would be to the settlers on the Rio Negro, and how easily they might be floated down to them!

Villariño named this river the Rio de la Encarnacion. By the Indians, it is called Limé-leubú, or the river of leeches: indeed they call the main stream so, during its whole course to the junction of the Neuquen; after which, they give it the appellation of Curi-leubú, the River Negro. They described it as proceeding from the great lake of Nahuel-huapi,[26] where, in the year 1704, the Jesuits established a mission, which was afterwards destroyed by some hostile savages, and the Fathers murdered. The vestiges of their habitations and chapel still remain, and that part of the country is called by the Indians Tuca-malal, probably from some allusion to the ruins; the inhabitants call themselves Huilliches, or the southern people. Through them, to Villariño's surprise, the Pehuenches Indians, whom he shortly afterwards fell in with, had already received accounts of the establishment of the Spaniards at San Julians; the news had doubtless been carried to them by the friendly Indians, with whom Viedma had been in communication at that place, and whom he speaks of in his diary as having gone northward on an expedition which lasted four months, to buy horses from the Indians in that direction.

But if the Spaniards were surprised to hear these people speak of their countrymen at San Julians, 600 miles off, they were much more so, to be asked by them if the war between Spain and England was over. In this, however, it turned out that they had a more direct interest than might have been expected; certain articles of European manufacture which they had been in the habit of purchasing from the Valdivians having become scarce and dear, from the interruption of the trade of that place with Spain in consequence of the war. Who would have supposed that the Indians of Araucania could have known or cared whether England and Spain were at war or not?

Having taken this cursory view of the Encarnacion, Villariño returned to continue his voyage up the northern branch of the Negro, which is called the Catapuliché by the Indians. It would perhaps be more correct to consider, as they do, the Encarnacion as the upper part of the Negro, and the Catapuliché as an affluent joining it from the opposite direction. Its shallowness prevented their making much way up it; after much labour and difficulty, in twenty days they had only advanced ten leagues, and then all hope of getting further was at an end. This was on the 17th of April, when they were in latitude 39° 40´, over against Valdivia.

The Catapuliché runs along the base of the Cordillera, distant five or six miles; it is joined by several streams from the mountains, which irrigate the intervening slopes and plains, and form good pasture-grounds for the Indians; and here they found their old acquaintances, who had run away from them lower down the river; and who, nothing abashed by what had passed, came at once to the boats to beg for spirits and tobacco.

Villariño, restraining his indignation at their effrontery, renewed his intercourse with them in the hope of obtaining their assistance in reaching Valdivia; which, by their accounts, was not more than two or three days' journey distant across the mountains. Deputations arrived also from the Pehuenches, and Aucazes, Araucanian tribes in the neighbourhood, who showed a great readiness to be of any use;—they brought the Spaniards fruit and other necessaries, and everything promised a speedy realization of their wishes to be placed in communication in a few days with their countrymen on the shores of the Pacific. At the moment, however, when they were looking forward to the speedy accomplishment of this object, their hopes were blasted by an unlucky quarrel amongst the Indians themselves, in which one of their principal caciques, Guchumpilqui, was killed. His followers rose to avenge his death, and Chulilaquini, the chief who killed him, fled with his tribe to the Spaniards, earnestly soliciting their protection; to obtain which the more readily, he told a plausible story of a general league being formed amongst the Indians to attack them on the first favourable opportunity, and that it was in consequence of his refusal to join in this coalition, that the dispute had arisen which cost Guchumpilqui, the principal in the plot, his life. As this Guchumpilqui was the leader of the tribe they had met with on the Rio Negro, whose manœuvres had already impressed Villariño with the belief that he meditated some such treachery, he was quite prepared to credit Chulilaquini's tale; and thinking it at any rate advisable to secure the aid of some of the savages, he too readily promised him the protection he asked for. This brought the expedition to an end.

As soon as it was known that the Spaniards were disposed to take the part of Chulilaquini, they were regarded as declared enemies, and preparations were made to attack them. The Indians were bent on avenging the death of their chief, and it was soon evident that, as to communicating with the Valdivians under the circumstances, it was out of the question. After some fruitless efforts, at any rate, to get a letter conveyed across the mountains, Villariño was reluctantly obliged to make up his mind to return. Since entering the Catapuliché, much snow and rain had fallen, which had increased its depth as much as three or four feet: it had become in fact a navigable river, instead of a shallow stream. Their Indian allies helped them to lay in a stock of apples, of which there are great quantities in all those parts, and of piñones, the fruit of the pine-tree, which, taken out of the husk, is not unlike a Barbary date in taste as well as appearance; and with these supplies they once more got under weigh, the swollen stream carrying them down rapidly and safely over all the shoals and dangers which had cost them so much toil and difficulty to surmount as they went up; the land too, had put on a new appearance after the rain, and many places which appeared arid and steril wastes before, were now covered with green herbage. With little more than an occasional oar to keep them in the mid-stream, they went the whole way down to Carmen without the smallest obstruction, and arrived there in just three weeks from the time of leaving the Catapuliché, after an absence altogether of eight months. Thus it was proved to be perfectly practicable to pass by this river from the shores of the Atlantic to within fifty or sixty miles of Valdivia on the Pacific, the mountain-range alone intervening.

To what beneficial account this discovery of an inland water communication across the continent might in the last fifty years have been turned by an enterprising people, it is difficult to calculate. The Spaniards seemed rather desirous to conceal than to publish the fact of its existence. Till the expedition of General Rosas in 1833, against the Indians, no boat ever again went up the Negro higher than Choleechel; and but that I obtained possession of Villariño's Diary during my residence at Buenos Ayres, and published the substance of it in the "Journal of the Geographical Society," his Enterprise would probably have been consigned to perpetual oblivion.

Chulilaquini followed the boats, and settled his people within reach of his Spanish friends, in the neighbourhood of Carmen; but the Indians, in general, looked upon the new settlement with the greatest jealousy, and became extremely troublesome.